Though hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic, Italy is returning to life in the new normal and it looked a lot like the former normal at the recent and fifth annual Poltu Quati Classic Concours d’Elegance staged at Costa Smeralda on the northern coast of the island of Sardinia.
Best of Show honors went to the 1970 Porsche 917 LH driven by Gerard Larrousse and Willi Kauhsen to a second-place finish in the 24 Hours of Le Mans behind a Porsche 917K driven by Hans Herfmann and Richard Attwood. The Best of Show winner wears “psychedelic” livery and is owned by the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia.
Runner-up for Best of honors was a 1955 Ferrari 857 S racer.
Dora Bandini | GFG Style photo 
Tour awards presented
Concours festivities began July 10 at San Pantaleo with the debut of the Dora Bandini, a open electric-powered prototype by Giorgetto Giugiaro that was to have been unveiled at the canceled Geneva Motor Show.
Giorgetto and Fabrizio Giugiaro’s GFG Style unveiled a pair of concept vehicles on Sardinia. The other was the GFG Vision 2030.
On July 11, concours cars toured Costa Smeralda, including a stop at Vesper beach where Roger Moore and Barbara Bach emerged from the water in the amphibious Lotus Esprit S1 in the 1977 James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me.
The concours, hosted by the Grand Hotel Poltu Quatu, was held July 12 at the Li Neuli Country Club.
At the event, concours founder Simone Bertolero that the 2021 Poltu Quatu Classic will expand and will be patterned on Monterey Car Week. That 2021 event is scheduled to take place in early June, the week after the annual Villa d’Este Concours d’Elegance on the shores of Lake Como in northern Italy.
How in the hell do they get the cars to Sardinia? It’s hard enough to get people there let alone all those cars!!!